JOURNAL OF GERONTOLOGY SOCIAL SCIENCES: FEATURED 2022 EDITOR’S CHOICE ARTICLES

Abstract Social science inquiry on age, aging, and the life course spans many topics and methodologies. This symposium highlights papers that were selected as Editor’s Choice articles in the Journal of Gerontology Social Sciences in 2022. These papers highlight methodological innovations, important advancements in our state of knowledge in an area, or emerging issues in the study of aging and older adults. Moen et al. trace the divergence in later-adulthood work trajectories at the intersection of race, gender, and class. Hamler et al. discuss the impact of skin tone on mental health among older Black Americans. Waselmann et al. present an innovation of counting number of days one attended school and whether one lived in the Jim Crow South to help explain Black-White disparities in later-life cognitive function. Falzarano et al. explore cultural differences in orientation toward familialism and its impact on caregiver outcomes. Zimmer et al. examine the linkage between war exposure and later-life frailty among Vietnamese older adults.

hypothesized to be a key contributor to later-life health; however, work environments are often understudied as a critical social factor shaping health over the life course.Utilizing new data from the Health and Retirement Study's Life History Mail Survey linked to occupational work context data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), we examine how exposure to dangerous work environments over one's working career relates to the likelihood of developing a metabolic disease or illness between the ages of 50 and 62. Results from logistic regressions suggest that dangerous work environment exposures, such as exposures to contaminants or hazardous conditions, are associated with increased risk of developing metabolic disease and illnesses between ages 50 and 62; however, these associations are dependent upon when in the life course people are exposed to dangerous work contexts and for how long people are exposed to dangerous work contexts.This study speaks to the growing need for understanding the role of occupations as an important social and contextual factor shaping population health.Specifically, findings from this study may better inform the development of social and organizational policies targeted at improving work environments in the US, thereby helping to reduce the risk of developing healthrelated challenges, including metabolic diseases and illnesses.The health of older Black and Hispanic populations are disproportionately impacted by cognitive decline later in life.Although cognitive stimulation through work protects against cognitive decline and dementia in later life, Black and Hispanic individuals have less access to cognitively stimulating employment opportunities compared with their white counterparts.This study aims to disentangle the relationship between work complexity and cognitive function later in life across racial/ethnic groups.Using nationally representative data from the Occupation Information Network (O*NET) linked to the Health and Retirement Study' Life History Mail Survey (n=1080), we examine how cumulative exposure to cognitively complex work between ages 25 to 55 is associated with cognitive function at age 70 in regressions controlling for cognitive function at age 55 and relevant socio-demographic measures.A composite measure of work complexity was constructed from making decisions and solving problems, thinking creatively, coaching and developing others, frequency of decision making, and freedom to make decisions.Results from regression analyses suggest that compared with cumulative exposure to less cognitively complex work, cumulative exposure to moderately cognitively complex work was associated with a 0.74 point increase in the cognitive score (p<0.01), and cumulative exposure to highly cognitively complex work was associated with a 1.25 point increase (p<0.01) in cognitive score.Among those who held moderately cognitively complex jobs, Black individuals experienced fewer cognitive benefits than their white counterparts later in life.The connection between early life career choices and later life outcomes is a topic of interest to gerontology researchers, but research has been limited by data availability.In this paper, we present a newly constructed LHMS-HRS-O*NET linked dataset.The 2017 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) Life History Mail Survey (LHMS) includes information on up to 10 jobs that respondents worked for more than a year.We consolidated this employment history with the biennial HRS Core survey data.Then, respondents' occupations from the LHMS were mapped to the O*NET 26.1 Database to add information on their exposure to different work contexts, activities, and etc.The final dataset is a panel at individual-year level with annual occupational exposure from the first job after full-time education until the last job people held before 2017.The data covers over 4,000 individuals in the HRS with all O*NET measures available in O*NET 26.1.This presentation will demonstrate how researchers can use these data to calculate the cumulative occupational exposures for any period of one's career and connect that information to socioeconomic, health, and other outcomes at older ages that are available in HRS.This new data is ideal for studying how full life histories of work are related to differential aging outcomes.

JOURNAL OF GERONTOLOGY SOCIAL SCIENCES: FEATURED 2022 EDITOR'S CHOICE ARTICLES Chair: Jessica Kelley
Social science inquiry on age, aging, and the life course spans many topics and methodologies.This symposium highlights papers that were selected as Editor's Choice articles in the Journal of Gerontology Social Sciences in 2022.These papers highlight methodological innovations, important advancements in our state of knowledge in an area, or emerging issues in the study of aging and older adults.Education's contribution to Black-White disparities in cognitive function remains unclear due to data limitations that capture systemic educational inequities in the Jim Crow South.We include differential rates of school attendance across race, years, and states in the Jim Crow South.
We linked state-level data on school attendance from the 1919 to 1954 Biennial Surveys of Education to the HRS.Sample restricted to Black and White older adults who attended school in the Jim Crow South in the study period (n = 4,343).We examined total cognitive function, episodic memory, and working memory.Total years of schooling explained 28%-33% of the Black-White disparity in all three outcomes.Differential rates of school attendance explained 41%-55% of the Black-White disparity in these outcomes.Our study highlights the importance of using a more refined measure of schooling for understanding the education-cognitive health relationship.The increasing number of minority older adults and subsequent increase in minority individuals needed to provide care highlights the need to understand how the caregiving role is experienced and perceived among racial/ ethnic minority groups.Familism, a cross-cultural collectivist value, has been examined as a driving mechanism influencing differential outcomes in family caregivers.However, research examining familism in caregiving has yielded mixed results.Guided by the Sociocultural Stress and Coping Model, the purpose of this study is to examine cross-cultural differences in familism and its influence on caregiving outcomes.Baseline data were collected from 243 family caregivers who participated in the Caring for the Caregiver Network randomized controlled trial, a culturally tailored technology-based psychosocial intervention.Results showed that familism was more highly endorsed by Hispanic and African American participants, when compared to Whites, which was subsequently associated with positive aspects of caregiving, depression, and burden.Exploratory analyses among the Hispanic subgroup were conducted to examine how acculturation, operationalized as number of years living in the US, influences familism and found that a longer length of time spent in the US was negatively associated with familism.When dividing our sample into U.S. natives versus non-natives, non-native Hispanic participants reported higher familism compared to natives.Findings indicate that cross-cultural differences in caregiving appraisals may operate as a function of cultural values, which influence one's subjective evaluation of the caregiving role and contribute to more optimal outcomes -highlighting the need for culturally congruent interventions to promote positive caregiving outcomes particularly among racial/ethnic minorities.
Findings have implications for research and interventions addressing disparities in cognitive health among Black and Hispanic populations through employment-related policies and interventions.
Moen et al. trace the divergence in later-adulthood work trajectories at the intersection of race, gender, and class.Hamler et al. discuss the impact of skin tone on mental health among older Black Americans.Waselmann et al. present an innovation of counting number of days one attended school and whether one lived in the Jim Crow South to help explain Black-White disparities in later-life cognitive function.Falzarano et al. explore cultural differences in orientation toward familialism and its impact on caregiver outcomes.Zimmer et al. examine the linkage between war exposure and later-life frailty among Vietnamese older adults.